Let's just say this is your favorite skier's favorite ski movie of 2023. We're talking the greatest hits from urban sessions to one of the wildest Alaskan spine segments we've ever seen. Check out Colby Stevenson, Tom Wallisch, Maggie Voisin, Tucker FitzSimons, Tim McChesney, Quinn Wolferman, Mac Forehand, Blake Wilson, Thayne Rich and many more in Good Company's Crescendo.

11/14/23 - This week’s stoke:

What we’re watching:

• Kai Jones Straightlines Couloir - Kai Jones is 16 now, but he's been skiing big kid terrain for years and it keeps showing. Last winter he was in Montana with Parkin Costain and Jake Hopfinger filming for TGR's Legend Has It when he suddenly forgot how to turn midway down this 1000+ foot couloir.

• Dennis Ranalter in Descendance - Race and identity rarely get talked about in ski movies, but for Austrian freeskier Dennis Ranalter it's been intertwined since Day 1. His latest film with the North Face Descendance dives deep into his personal story, exploring his father's homeland in Ghana, his experience as a Black skier in the Alps, and showcasing some of his most stylish skiing to date from Austria to Japan.

The Beta:

• Skier Triggered Avalanche in Montana - A skier triggered and was caught in an avalanche in Montana's Bridger Range last week. They were luckily able to self arrest after 20 feet. The avalanche was a 1.5-foot-deep hard wind slab that ran over facets on a north-northeast aspect.

• Fatal Avalanche in Canada - An avalanche occurred in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park just west of Calgary. Two ice climbers were descending when they were hit by a aize 2 wind slab from above. One climber was partially buried and the second was fully buried and unfortunately did not survive.

Elevating the Craft:

• ISSW Paper Says We Might Be Rescue Digging Incorrectly - A paper presented at the 2023 International Snow Science Workshop (ISSW) by an Italian group showed evidence that we might be digging out buried partners wrong. Standard North American rescue training teaches us to start digging 1.5x the burial depth downhill from your probe strike. According to the paper, the "conveyor belt" method practiced by the Italian Alpine Club (CAI) is to start digging one shovel length away from the probe strike. Both methods were tested and, according to the paper "Based on 48-paired pits excavation time measurements, one dug with the canonical method and one dug by initiating ‘far-from-probe’ in average it took 2 minutes 33 seconds more in the latter case.” That means starting just a shovel length away, instead of 1.5x the burial depth, was shown to be over 2.5 minutes faster for a victim buried 1.3 meters deep. That's significant!

Sidetracked:

• Cody Townsend talks about the future of the Fifty - Cody Townsend has been working on the Fifty Project for the last four years. Hundreds of thousands of skiers have followed along with his journey. In this article he discusses the toll it has taken on his life and skiing motivation. While he intends to continue to ski the few lines he has remaining to knock off the fifty classics he may no longer film them, just doing it for himself and not for the audience. As bummed as we are not to follow along with Cody, we always support skiing for the right reasons, especially when on lines as serious as Cody is chasing.